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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363660">The Destruction of Madain Sari</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zalzaires/pseuds/zalzaires'>zalzaires</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>an angel of death is best accented in red [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Final Fantasy IX</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Canon Retelling, Gen, POV Third Person Limited, a whole lot of slow set up, also this is chock full of my own headcanons but i mean what is fanfiction but that, current mentioned death count: 1, probably going to have more chapters than i think but it's about halfway done, tense scenes with a parent figure, well.. the title says where this is going, written from kuja's pov since that's kind of my wheelhouse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:54:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,837</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25363660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zalzaires/pseuds/zalzaires</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Garland deigns to visit his creation to assign him a new mission. A short work in progress, but it's fully planned out!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>an angel of death is best accented in red [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110569</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. from pawn to King</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">“<em>Garland waited on the bridge.</em><em>”</em></p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">In the years since his exile, Kuja had kept busy.</p><p class="western">He ventured more to place himself among the living throng of Gaia. No longer solely the stalking specter of death, now he was the devil in plain sight – he had become, as much as he could stand, participant of the productions of daily life.</p><p class="western">The first step was settling on the perfect setting. It had to be on the Mist Continent, of course – all other settlements of Gaia were meaningless in size and scale. There was where the poisoned heart of the planet beat most bare… and due to its own rot, where the plunge of the knife would be most eagerly accepted.</p><p class="western">He narrowed his search the rest of the way for more shallow reasons. Opportunity, opulence, a taste for the sordid and the twisted that spoke deeply to his own – it could only ever be one place, couldn’t it?</p><p class="western">The angel of death folded up his wings and came to a roost in the city cast in eternal night and glittering lamplight.</p><p class="western"><span>H</span>e made a name for himself – that is, he alighted upon a suitable name, disposed of its owner and slipped simply into his place. Treno received him into its upper crust without a single hiccup.</p><p class="western">No one missed the man underneath the moniker. Life went on as usual as long as Kuja was around to prop the name upon his own shoulders. In a way, it felt like he was the only one alive who truly understood his predecessor.. having witnessed those last moments of life draining from his eyes. He almost considered him a companion, of sorts, after all the time Kuja had spent sifting through belongings and writings to better complete his takeover.</p><p class="western">Overall? It was easier than he expected. The title ‘King’ bore with it the reputation of an elusive eccentric; a hermit, a man so few had ever seen or truly known that no one even noticed a change as drastic as <em>someone else entirely </em>slipping into his place. All it took was a change of clothes.</p><p class="western">It wouldn’t be long until he could finally doff the dreadful wig for good, and claim he changed style with the season. Gold was never his color. Silver, though – stronger, long-suffering silver… Only the sight of silver strewn about his shoulders, hemming in at the corners of his eyes, felt proper, felt right. Like himself.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. from King to knight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">...As soon as he could get away from all these burbling Gaians, he would toss aside his disguise, and brush his poor flattened hair out with his hands.</p><p class="western">Today was a particularly arduous trial of his patience – Lord King was called upon for the first time since his <em>little accident</em> to attend a meeting of Treno’s local governing body.</p><p class="western">He’d been here for forty-six minutes, nearly forty-seven, according to the massive grandfather clock he kept stealing glances at. It was sort of a plain clock, in his opinion: dark wood with evident grain, fluted columns up the sides leading to a curvy crown, a swinging pendulum layered in white gold. Whoever furnished this meeting room was certainly of a reserved mind. A clerk with a dry, annoying voice was currently reading off a document at the pace of a dying snail, and the attending nobility were supposed to… debate about what it said, he thinks? Argue about it, anyway, until someone started nodding and they moved on and did it all over again. Kuja was beginning to understand why his predecessor avoided these meetings. and why the woman taking registry made such a tut over his ‘deigning to make an appearance.’</p><p class="western">If he had to describe his overall mood…? <em>Sleepy</em>. That was a good word.</p><p class="western">But as much of a boring pain the experience was, it established him as a figure of authority in the city, and it made the sound of his voice take primacy as that of Lord King. He supposed he was also learning by osmosis how a Gaian city functioned at its upper echelons. Maybe that would prove useful once it stopped being so annoying and in his way. All of Gaia was his oyster, and conceptually, he did want to understand the function of its organs… eventually. Perhaps out of a book. That would be much more pleasant.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">Garland’s order came as a bolt from the blue.</p><p class="western">Bustle and murmurs abruptly roared together into a harsh, unified buzz. The underworld had come to call for its errant spawn.</p><p class="western">
  <em> <b> I have a task for you. Consider it your chance at redemption.</b> </em>
</p><p class="western">The voice of his master was a clarion call that made his heart leap, his head swim. Like a child spitefully sweeping a chessboard’s pieces onto the floor, everything he had been working for at that moment was off, wasted, to the wayside. He tried to hide his face from sight with a long swig of his drink, unable to flush all the untimely anger from his expression. He set the goblet down too firmly and excused himself.</p><p class="western">Cover stories would have to be a thought for later.</p><p class="western">It was a simple matter to slip away. It was a simple matter that he lacked a choice.<br/><br/>…</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">The genome waded into the tall grass, striding away from his dragon mount with a stiffness to his body that felt terrifically unbecoming. They had ridden on his master’s instruction into dawnlight, to an isolated field nestled between a meeting of mountains. For those last moments alone with himself, a dog with his tail between his legs – as his own witness, he felt disgust. Resignation pulled him forward, and fear of this man, long ago forged to be steely and heavy on his heart, kept his eyes to the ground.</p><p class="western">The Invincible waited above, and he was loath to look. It was enough that he had to wait for it to sweep him off his feet into the dismal depths of the ship… it was enough that he had to stand still and merely submit to whatever came next. He would not greet it.</p><p class="western">Garland had directed him here. He had not yet filled him in as to why.</p><p class="western">Firmly, he stared at the swaying grass. The very simplest sign of Gaian life, and yet… he had never seen something like it, in the land of his origin.</p><p class="western">All that moved upon Terra was manufactured. Nothing of it was wild… all it had left to it were disgusting ruins and malevolent intent. Even these meaningless motions of the wind playing out upon the grass made him envious…</p><p class="western">He watched with a riven heart as in a circle around his feet, the carefree grass was bathed in an otherworldly red light.</p><p class="western">And then he was gone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. from knight to bishop</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">The innards of the Invincible were unchanged, from his last time aboard. The familiar locale did nothing for his nerves. For Kuja, the new and novel was enticing, but the things that felt deep and ingrained…</p><p class="western">
  
  <em>
    <b>Come to the bridge.</b>
  </em>
</p><p class="western">…Those, he resented.</p><p class="western">He made his way to the bridge in a vague daze. Fingers ghosting at railings, steps echoing alone in such a way as to merely deepen a profound stillness. The ship was alive around him… there was nothing in this place that lived. There was a hum in the air that spoke wordlessly to his body more than his mind. The longer he steeped in it, the more it sank in upon him: auric information. A staple of Terran tech, the emanation of data through crystalline aura, to be interpreted by a receptive body – that is, in this case, <em>his</em> – for the purpose of consistent dissemination. Largely flawless, unless disrupted by a competing aura.</p><p class="western">Oh, memories. One of the first things he ever did as, you could say, a<em> treat</em> for himself was to get really, <em>really</em><b> good</b> at jammer spells like Shell and Reflect for the express purpose of getting some damned peace and quiet.</p><p class="western">He itched to cast one right now. Numbers and terms drifted dizzying through his brain, unbidden; status of the engine <em>(functional, idling, slight uptick from regular temperature due to length of standby)</em>, condition of ship’s internal atmosphere <em>(airflow set to ripple pattern 3, humidity high, air quality low but within acceptable minimums)</em>, estimates of health and remaining lifespan of each organic component <em>(he saw something cloudy and murky blearily looking toward him and knew it was in the throes of dying, replacement organism currently juvenile) </em>and on and on…</p><p class="western">It hadn’t bothered him this much, when he was still allowed the run of the place. But now? It was a miserable scene, and he longed to be quit of it. Ah, what difference time with more slack on his leash had made…! Three years since his banishment, three years since he’d spirited away his pint-sized replacement to parts – still, hopefully, unknown.</p><p class="western">Three years, since he had laid eyes on his creator.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">Garland waited on the bridge.</p><p class="western">His back was turned to the entrance. It didn’t make for any less of a striking sight. Garland was a pillar of darkness that stood sternly tall, in a pose entirely unlike an animate being and more akin to a carved figure. Every piece of him meant to menace and strike awe, not to be spoken to, not to be accompanied. Perfectly lonesome and without peer, the timeless old man who stood vigil so that a decayed world might thrive one day, once more.</p><p class="western">He did not turn, nor even say a word to his creation in greeting. Garland simply waited for him to come closer, standing of course in the position of the captain of the ship. Perhaps he was taking in the view of the starry, dawning sky outside. There were few clouds, and one could still see the twin moons looming up above… Blue, prime and prominent. Red, faint and fading fast.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">He didn’t expect his first glimpse of the man to feel – like this. Like he’d been stung inside his chest. The first time they ever saw each other again wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was going to prove he was both worthy of his destiny, and in defiance of it – that he would be more than Garland’s instrument, more than a vessel of the bloody dreams of ancient ghosts. There was a worthy world, here, for the taking. More worthy and precious than to simply serve as a meal for the parasites clinging to its insides.</p><p class="western">
  <em> “If you are so desperate to show me you alone are what is needed, then go. Fulfill your purpose. You will have all eternity has to offer you, Kuja. From here on, you will dwell only on Gaia. You will trouble me here no longer.”</em>
</p><p class="western">...Garland’s final words upon their parting rang like a tolling bell through his thoughts, shattering them. He felt like his head was as empty as a sieve.</p><p class="western">“Garland,” he said aloud, then realized his mistake. “Master Garland,” he corrected himself, quickly and quieter – and it felt like three years had never happened.</p>
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